I don’t get this. But for whatever reason a lot of people seem to believe in this myth that technology is making people stupider. Many people complain that our TV shows or other advanced technology are dumbing down our society. Why is this?
Many people can’t do simple arithmetic without a calculator (OK, no cite, but it sure seems that way). Consider all the stories of idiots taking their GPS devices as divinely inspired and following the instructions of their GPS regardless if whether they make sense. I could come up with other examples if I thought about it for a while, but I’m sure by then other people will have chimed in.
In a many ways people are getting stupider. As Canadjun notes, a lot of the skills that used to be taken for granted are now lost. And that’s not just related directly to “technology”, like needing calculators to add. There was a time when virtually everyone could cook well enough to keep themselves alive, could saddle a horse, understood basic animal handling, new how to use a wide variety of hand tools from saws to sewing needles and so forth.
These are all skills that have been lost to a large degree because they are no longer needed. As a result, people appear more stupid than they were. When I regularly meet people in their 20s who don’t understand that plants need water, who are unable to do basic household repairs like plastering a whole in a wall and who can’t cook anything beyond frying an egg, my first reaction is that people are getting dumber. Of course that’s not true. People aren’t losing those skills because they are any less intelligent. They’re losing those skills because they don’t need them.
Most of it is that we’ve become sufficiently specialised that it’s more efficient to get specialised people to do things like house repairs for you, and in turn the house repairers employ those same people to do basic tasks for them. And that has been going on forever. My father used to bemoan the fact that my ability to fix cars was limited to basic stuff like changing gaskets, and I had to pay people to do more complex stuff. But that had nothing to do with me being more stupid than his generation. It’s just that I didn’t need to do it. It was more efficient for me to pay someone $100 bucks to fix my clutch, than for me to spend 16 hours of my weekend doing it, which is what my father did.
The other part is that leisure trends have changed. There was a time when “everyone” had basic gardening skills because leisure time was spent outside. As options become more varied, there’s less and less need for that, and many people are opting out all together. As a result we get people with no ability to care for plants and animals because they have no need to do so. And oinc again, the same was true of previous generations. Most people of my generation couldn’t saddle a horse if their life depended on it, not because they are stupid but because they have no interest in what has become a purely recreational skill.
And these trend is still continuing. So as we age, we see people lacking skills we took for granted, and we attribute it to stupidity because in our generation you would have had to be stupid not to know those things. But of course for this generation they are no more essential than an ability to replace a clutch spring or saddle a horse.
Objectively of course, people are getting smarter. IQs continue to rise each generation. So while people have certainly lost a lot of mechanical skills, they have picked up a lot of tech skills. One skill set has simply replaced another.
People aren’t getting stupider, it just appears that way. And it’s appeared that way ever since Grog pointed out how stupid people were because they couldn’t even stalk a deer and were wasting all their time with this “farming” stuff, which clearly didn’t require as much intelligence.
I think this is probably better suited to IMHO than GQ.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
When I learned how difficult it used to be for people to run computer programs back in the day, I realized that had I been born 20 years earlier, I would have have never become a scientist. I wouldn’t have made it through graduate school because I don’t have the patience to stick stacks of punch cards into a computer late at night, only to redo everything if there was a mistake in the code. And I actually consider myself a patient person.
Not to mention doing all that library research. I have a vague memory of card catalogues from my middle school years. All that was obsolete by the time I hit graduate school and I had electronic databases at my fingertips.
Technology has opened up the world of research so that you no longer have to have the patience of Job to do it. I bet there are a lot more Ph.D’s with ADD out there than there ever used to be. Patience != intelligence. But is a virtue.
Judging by a lot of the business correspondence I get at the office, I’d say that a lot of folks are losing ground in written communication. It seems to me that the trend is moving towards “spell-check didn’t catch it, so it must be right.” It makes me cringe when I see the interchangeable use of your/you’re, loose/lose, and so many others. My other favorite is the apostrophe tossed in for no reason.
What Blake said. Skills which are not needed, atrophy.
Definitely an inability to parse grammar correctly. Everyone makes an occasional spelling mistake but most oldschool know that then is a time and than a comparison. I could go on about the difference between too and to or they’re and their but you get the point. Smart phones R m8kin pepL dum when it comes to sentence structure as well. Read and weep from the self published on Amazon some time.
Perhaps Blake is right. I hope so. But the thing that makes me doubt it is that I could look at a saddle and figure out the correct cinching technique. I was taught to value that which has come before rather than disdain it. While it is true that I must make an effort to give new ideas and methods an equal reverence I seem to do so better than the young make the adjustment to older ways. Perhaps that feeds a fear of gradual standards lessening.
A. Why do you call it a myth?
B. I don’t think that TV fits properly into this discussion. TV is designed to appeal to the lowest common denominator of society, ergo, it IS extremely stupid, but, it doesn’t make society stupid, it is addressing the stupid that is already there.
I am tired as heck of people making fun of me for not knowing how to drive a manual transmission
I’ve never had a manual car I just haven’t had to learn that skill
i dont agree wit u. computers make me smrt!!! u just jelous bc computers arent just 4 u nerds!!!
(Wow, that was really difficult to type. Literally (and not “literally”) took me 4x as long to figure out how to say things.
Not dumb: “I don’t know how to drive a manual because it’s never been an issue and I haven’t had the opportunity to learn.”
Dumb: “Manual is for losers, I spit on your offer to teach me.”
Not dumb (ignorant at worst): “Quantum mechanics? I’m not sure what that is. Sounds hard.”
Dumb: “Quantum mechanics? Sounds like math. I not reading a stupid book except Twilight! And right now I’m busy working my way through the latest issue of People.”
TVTropes link: New Technology is Evil.
Blake hit the nail on the head.
The recent trend has been less for people to internalize knowledgem, than to learn how to access it when needed. While each of us potentially has access to vastly more information that our ancestors, we carry less of it around in our heads.
Somewhat related - but also reflecting the increased pace of everything, increasingly matters seem to be addressed at supeficial levels. When quickly looking something up on-line, the distinction between opinion and “fact” seems to be harder to discern.
Many folk maintain that multitasking is not the wonder solution many folk suggest. In at least some situations, when folk multitask, they do all things less well.
Personally, I wonder of the effect of “information overload.” With so much information constantly coming at you, and increasing numbers of choices across the board, is it becoming more difficult to discern between the truly important and the insignificant?
Another aspect related to comments above - as more and more aspects of our life depend on more and more complicated technology, someone who is not tech trained becomes a more passive user than active participant. For example, in the past there was at least the possibility that someone who was “handy” could diagnose or repair household appliances - or even their car. Whereas now it either gets tossed, or given to an expert. Not sure the quality of one’s life is better or worse as a result, but it is different.
Just a couple of thoughts from an old luddite! 
Not so nowadays, as IQ ratings automatically adjust to a median score of 100.